19th...Lyrical craftsmanship

For the Roses. Four stars.

1972s For the Roses was supposed to be Joni Mitchell's farewell to the music industry. Uncomfortable with her progressing popularity, she released this album and took a relatively short hiatus, returning in 1974.

So in my mind, this record marks her farewell more to the heart-on-the-sleeve singer-songwriter style she'd epitomized on Blue, and the groundwork for later obscuritantism. (I don't believe that's a real word)

Banquet is the uncompromising start-up, taking a simple metaphor of life as a banquet and expanding it into something just a titch more complicated. The beauty of much of the album is found in the structure. Joni knew how to arrange a song, even a simple piano ballad.

Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire is as impenetrable as the title makes it sound. Jazz inflections on a guitar track, a beautiful melody if one has the patience to tease it out, her voice turning hollow and spooky and a lyric far too deep on a thematic level for me to understand.

Barangrill is much easier, thematically and melodically. The denizens of a Bar and Grill are lovingly described, while woodwinds and reeds highlight a memorable tune. It is pleasant and easy to overplay, since there isn't a whole lot underneath the charm.

Back to piano with Lesson in Survival, and back to the seaside painted in Banquet. Journalistic free verse, set to a vague tune. It details the straining elements of a relationship. "I came in as bright/as a neon light/and I burned out/right there before him." Moving story, excellently crafted and immediately forgettable.

It shifts superbly into Let the Wind Carry Me, detailing the strain between a rock n roll rebel and her parents.

For the Roses moves back to guitar and is an informed, detailed song about life as a singer-songwriter. After the last couple, the melody is especially nice and the imagery proves how adept Joni Mitchell is with a lyric.

See You Sometime is a continuation of it. And it occurs to me that I'm not recommending her as being fun to listen to. In fact, the singer-songwriter genre is not replete with light-hearted self deprecation and absurdities. No, it's like art, recommended as thought-provoking material. It's just not good time music.

Where was I? Electricity; another simple metaphor, faulty wiring = a relationship. It's rather touching, just for that simplicity.

Harmonica! You know this one. It's You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio. Got into the Top 25, without benefit of a chorus, and it is a sweet little love song. It makes me smile. Oh, and it's Nash supplying the harmonica.

Blonde in the Bleachers is a vignette, brief but interesting. Stills gets on this one as the whole rock n roll band that invades the coda.

Woman of Heart and Mind is the most scathing song, though the delivery is merely contemplative.

Judgement of the Moon and Stars (Ludwig's Tune) is certainly the most ambitious of the lot. Obviously, the subject is Beethoven. It settles into a longish bridge, but the actual song is good, though it doesn't wrap up so much as pieter out.

Verdict? A good job all around. Not the study in excellence of Blue, nor her best collection of songs, since a lot of them only dimly register on a melodic level. Yet Joni's capability and strength of craftsmanship make it a splendid continuation record, though I wouldn't recommend it as a good starting point if you haven't heard any of her other work. She's got a good voice too.